Michael Kownacky

Our final production from the Vienna State Opera is the feature on this week’s Sunday Opera (12/14 3:00 p.m.) as we turn to Richard Strauss’ gentle comedy, “Arabella.” The opera is set in Vienna in the 1860s even though it didn’t premiere until 1933.It centers on the Waldner family who are facing bankruptcy because of the father’s (Wolfgang Bankl) gambling. The mother’s (Margaret Plummer) only hope is that one of their daughters, Arabella (Camilla Nylund), will marry a wealthy man.

In the past, we’ve looked at various types of songs found in musicals such as the “I want” songs where a character lets the audience know his or her reasons for doing things. In this week’s Dress Circle (7/14 7:00 p.m.), we’re going to be looking at ‘story songs” which are, oddly enough, songs that tell stories. Sometimes, those stories are life-histories, but many times, they act as allegories.

We’re heading to the Vienna State Opera for Tchaikovsky’s “Iolanta” on this week’s Sunday Opera (12/7 3:00 p.m.) for a story awakening love and sight gained that takes place in the 15th century in the mountains of southern France.

The end is nigh! Well, the end of the year, that is. Welcome to December, and to kick off the month of wishes and gifts, we’re going to be looking at a dozen musicals that opened in New York this month on this week’s Dress Circle (12/7 7:00 p.m.). We’ll be looking at 125 years of musical history, from Victor Herbert’s “The Ameer” in 1899 through to the 2024 revival of “Gypsy” that starred Audra McDonald and Danny Burstein.

Germanic paganism mixed with some Early Middle Age Christianity and a splash of Greek tragedy is the recipe for this week’s Sunday Opera (11/30 3:00 p.m.) and the Bayreuth Festival’s production of Richard Wagner’s “Lohengrin.”

We’re turning to our third and final (for now) program of Literary Based Musicals on this week’s Dress Circle (11/30 7:00 p.m.), and we’re once again looking at four very different works from Broadway, television, and London's West End.

We’re back at the Bayreuth Festival for the second of three Wagnerian operas on this week’s Sunday Opera (11/23 3:00 p.m.).This time it’s Wagner’s last opera, one that took him 25 years to complete, “Parsifal” which premiered at the second Bayreuth Festival in 1882 and will fill this week’s program.

The year is speeding by, and it’s unbelievable that we’re already facing Thanksgiving, but face it we must. To get you ready, this week’s Dress Circle (11/23 7:00 p.m.) is all about “thanks.” Well, songs that say “thank” in some way.

We’re off to the Bayreuth Festival on this week’s Sunday Opera (11/16 3:00 p.m.) for the first of three works by Wagner: “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg" which is about a 16th-century singing contest in Nuremberg where young knight Walther von Stolzing (Michael Spyres) hopes to win the hand of Eva Pogner (Christina Nilsson).

BECAUSE OF THE LENGTH OF THIS WEEK’S SUNDAY OPERA, THE DRESS CIRCLE WILL BEGIN ONE HOUR LATER THAN USUAL AT 8:00 P.M. (ET). As promised, we’re back with more Literary Based Musicals on this week’s Dress Circle (11/16 8:00 p.m.), Once again, we’ve focused on four novels as source material realized in fourteen songs from six different recordings.